Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence has achieved record-breaking attendance figures at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, with more than 130,000 visitors to the Museum since the exhibition opened in October.
Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence has achieved record-breaking attendance figures at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, with more than 130,000 visitors to the Museum since the exhibition opened in October.
This is the first time any exhibition at the Fitzwilliam has achieved over 100,000 visitors and there are still some weeks to go.
Timothy Potts
Due to the high demand, from January 3 the Museum is introducing later opening hours to enable local audiences and visitors from London and abroad to see the show.
The exhibition focuses on the 17th-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer and explores the mysterious appeal of the
women in his paintings, contrasting four of his works with 28 paintings by other master painters of the Dutch Golden Age.
Featuring Vermeer’s The Lacemaker from the Musée du Louvre on view in the UK for the first time, the exhibition has broken all records of visitor attendance averaging between 9,000 and 12,000 visitors each week and achieving exceptional national and international press acclaim with coverage from London to New York and as far afield as Japan.
Given this high demand, the Museum will extend its temporary exhibition opening hours by an extra two hours to 7pm on Tuesday to Fridays and an extra hour to 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays between 3 and 15 January.
During the extended opening hours the Courtyard entrance of the Museum will be open to allow visitors into its temporary exhibition space and the 20th century Galleries, where visitors can see Vermeer’s Women and another major exhibition Splendour & Power: Imperial Treasures from Vienna (closes 15 January).
The Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Dr Timothy Potts, said: “We are delighted that Vermeer’s Women has been such an unprecedented success; this is the first time any exhibition at the Fitzwilliam has achieved over 100,000 visitors and there are still some weeks to go.
"The critical and popular acclaim for Vermeer has been universal, and the catalogue too has received rave reviews. The increased opening hours will make it easier for people who work to visit, and for those who have already seen it once to do so again at a quieter time of day when there will be more space to view the works.”
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